Judge drops charges against defendant in Henry Glover case

A federal judge has thrown out charges against a former New Orleans policeman who faced a retrial next month on charges he helped cover up a deadly police shooting after Hurricane Katrina.

At the request of prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Lance Africk on Thursday dismissed the case against former Lt. Travis McCabe, who had been convicted of writing a false report on the shooting of Henry Glover.

Africk had ordered a new trial for McCabe based on evidence that surfaced after his conviction. It was scheduled to begin March 10.

There is now just one former officer, Gregory McRae, whose conviction in the case stands. McRae admitted in court to setting Glover’s body on fire in a car and then abandoning it.

Glover’s aunt, Rebecca Glover, told The New Orleans Advocate that a reporter’s call late Thursday was the first she’d heard of the decision to dismiss charges against McCabe.

“Nobody called us and told us nothing,” she said. “I think it stinks, the fact nobody told us anything. I’m devastated by all of this.”

The Glover family has asked Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard to classify Henry Glover’s death as a homicide so that the district attorney could file murder charges against former NOPD officer David Warren, the cop who shot Glover outside a West Band strip mall less than a week after Hurricane Katrina.

After Glover was shot, a good Samaritan gave him a ride to a makeshift police station at a school in Algiers where witnesses say he was beaten by cops. His remains were later found the good Samaritan’s burned car on the Mississippi River levee. Henry Glover;s skull was removed from the grisly murder scene and to this date has not been returned for proper burial.

A federal jury last month acquitted David Warren in a retrial that was granted because his cased was lumped together with those of other officers indicted in the case.

Although Warren admits he shot Glover, he testified that he did so because he thought the victim had a gun and that he did not know what happened to Glover after the shooting incident.

While Minyard agreed to reopen his investigation of the case, he has not reached a conclusion and has sought the advice of state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell. The family responded by asking Caldwell to launch an investigation of Frank Minyard.

This article originally published in the February 10, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.